Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Claremont Cottages

We came upon these lovely little Queen Anne style cottages on the near southwest side of Chicago the other day. I knew about their existence after I stumbled upon another, larger group of similar homes in the neighborhood of Oakland known as the Berkeley Cottages. What I didn't realize at the time, as you can see if you read the post, is that these cottages on the 1300 blocks of South Heath, Claremont and Oakley Avenues, not only still stand, but for the most part, are well maintained. Mea culpa. This group is probably an extension of the development known as the Claremont Cottages, a couple of blocks to the north, on the other side of Ogden Avenue.

Here is the Landmarks Illinois page devoted to this development which dates from 1884, which it attributes to the Chicago architect Normand S. Patton. Due to the unmistakable similarity between this Claremont group and the Berkeley Cottages designed by Cicero Hine two years later, it is very likely that Hine had a hand in the design of this earlier group as he worked as a draughtsman in Patton's office at the time of their construction.

Lynn Becker wrote about these homes back in 2010. You can find his post here.

Incidentally, one of the Berkeley Cottages just sold for over 300K, not too bad for a house in one of Chicago's more challenged neighborhoods during a bad economy. You can see interior photographs and read about it here.